Watch: 5K gaming on an iMac Pro

With a Vega 56 GPU, Apple's iMac Pro is well equipped to handle professional imaging tasks from high-resolution video editing to batch RAW photo processing. That power can also be applied to recreational activities like gaming, as we discovered in this video.

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Anyone even remotely contemplating getting an iMac Pro means that money isn't the issue, be it for work or *gasp* "gaming". You may not like someone getting such a machine with the thought of playing games on it, but if that's on their radar, so be it.

Because gaming on an Xbox/PS4 is the same as gaming on a computer. You obviously don't have a clue and are just talking out of your ass. Also, not all titles are available on a gaming console and when they are (such as PUBG), they absolutely suck.

I’m confused by all this especially AppleInsider’s heavy coverage (promotion?) of a high end, professional platform from Apple with minimum configuration costing $5k US$ for . . . gaming? I get it that the iMac Pro is a professional system for graphic pros. And if you have the coin to bring this home and game that’s fine. It’s your money. But seriously? After a hard day working on a SuperBowl ad you are going to let off steam with a few hours of gaming on the company deluxe platform? In my company you’d get fired. And if you are a sole contractor you will have to ask yourself why you are risking crucial components on recreation.

Meanwhile, we enter the fourth year without any tangible sign from Apple of a Mac Mini upgrade. Simply bizarre.

Apple Insider saw a 10% throttle for the Vega 56 GPU after 15 minutes at load, that might be even worse for the Vega 64 version.

Unfortunately there isn't a way for us to check the frequency of the Vega 56 under MacOS, but at the end of our 15-minute test, the last graphics score we received was 1667 with an average 66 frames per second. This is roughly 10 percent lower than the score of 1831 we received when running the benchmark by itself, where the CPU isn't also being maxed at the same time.

To ensure that this performance loss wasn't due to limited CPU power going to the graphics benchmark, we monitored the percentage of CPU performance Unigine Heaven was receiving. In both the isolated graphics test and simultaneous CPU and GPU benchmarks Unigine was receiving the same 5 percent to 7 percent of processing power, meaning that a 10 percent lower score is likely from the graphics chip throttling itself in order to keep the system from getting too hot.

I’m confused by all this especially AppleInsider’s heavy coverage (promotion?) of a high end, professional platform from Apple with minimum configuration costing $5k US$ for . . . gaming? I get it that the iMac Pro is a professional system for graphic pros. And if you have the coin to bring this home and game that’s fine. It’s your money. But seriously? After a hard day working on a SuperBowl ad you are going to let off steam with a few hours of gaming on the company deluxe platform? In my company you’d get fired. And if you are a sole contractor you will have to ask yourself why you are risking crucial components on recreation.

Meanwhile, we enter the fourth year without any tangible sign from Apple of a Mac Mini upgrade. Simply bizarre.

What does the Mac mini have to do with this iMac Pro gaming article? Why do people feel the need to try and bitch about the Mac mini in an article that has nothing to with it? You'll get your god damn Mac mini when its ready to be released and I'm sure you won't like it anyways.

I’m confused by all this especially AppleInsider’s heavy coverage (promotion?) of a high end, professional platform from Apple with minimum configuration costing $5k US$ for . . . gaming? I get it that the iMac Pro is a professional system for graphic pros. And if you have the coin to bring this home and game that’s fine. It’s your money. But seriously? After a hard day working on a SuperBowl ad you are going to let off steam with a few hours of gaming on the company deluxe platform? In my company you’d get fired. And if you are a sole contractor you will have to ask yourself why you are risking crucial components on recreation.

Meanwhile, we enter the fourth year without any tangible sign from Apple of a Mac Mini upgrade. Simply bizarre.

Two different questions, two different answers.

1) Because we got asked.

2) Yeah, it's been a long time for the mini -- but it has never been a good gaming machine, so that's not the answer either.

I’m confused by all this especially AppleInsider’s heavy coverage (promotion?) of a high end, professional platform from Apple with minimum configuration costing $5k US$ for . . . gaming? I get it that the iMac Pro is a professional system for graphic pros. And if you have the coin to bring this home and game that’s fine. It’s your money. But seriously? After a hard day working on a SuperBowl ad you are going to let off steam with a few hours of gaming on the company deluxe platform? In my company you’d get fired. And if you are a sole contractor you will have to ask yourself why you are risking crucial components on recreation.

Meanwhile, we enter the fourth year without any tangible sign from Apple of a Mac Mini upgrade. Simply bizarre.

What does the Mac mini have to do with this iMac Pro gaming article? Why do people feel the need to try and bitch about the Mac mini in an article that has nothing to with it? You'll get your god damn Mac mini when its ready to be released and I'm sure you won't like it anyways.

Kvetchers gotta kvetch. You'll find in any article, there's going to be a certain number of comments trying to turn the conversation around to their particular complaint about Apple. Like the people who post on iPhone articles about how they're still waiting for a new Mac Pro, or the people complaining about the iPhone on an article about the Mac Pro.

To the original post: Two points:

1. People spend upwards of US$5K on gaming rigs all the time. These people clearly have more money than sense, but just getting the GPUs pushes the cost up substantially. Add to that a high performance monitor and fast disks, you get to US$5K pretty quickly.

b. One of the complaints about Apple's "Pro" lineup at present is that the GPUs they've chosen aren't high enough performance. One way to prove they have the required performance is to see how they do in high-end gaming, where the ability to animate complex models in real-time is important.

Oh, and a final point:

iii. A large number of professionals in the market for this aren't salary workers for a wealthy mega-corporation. A lot of them will be self-employed contractors who need their own gear to do their work. Some of them might want to kick back and play some games after they've just completed a massive contract for someone. It's not really our place to judge them.

Hmmm. Disappointed that most of those responding to my post either didn’t read my original post or resorted to personal snarky attacks. Has AI Comments gone the way of YouTube comments? BTW folks, you aren’t employed by Apple so why condescendly tell me what Apple is or isn’t going to do with the Mac Mini? The reason, again, that I posted was that I found it odd that AI would go to great lengths to feature an article on gaming but has consistently given Apple a free pass on the Mac Mini. I am a long time loyal customer of Apple. I know of no serious gamer who would use a Mac for gaming. So, it would have been more interesting to see an article speculating on where Apple is going with the gaming. I suspect no where. The average, I repeat average, 16 year old will not drop 10K on an iMac Pro. I would love to respond to any points but I will not react to the juvenile “haters gunna hate” line of thinking.

I’m confused by all this especially AppleInsider’s heavy coverage (promotion?) of a high end, professional platform from Apple with minimum configuration costing $5k US$ for . . . gaming? I get it that the iMac Pro is a professional system for graphic pros. And if you have the coin to bring this home and game that’s fine. It’s your money. But seriously? After a hard day working on a SuperBowl ad you are going to let off steam with a few hours of gaming on the company deluxe platform? In my company you’d get fired. And if you are a sole contractor you will have to ask yourself why you are risking crucial components on recreation.

Meanwhile, we enter the fourth year without any tangible sign from Apple of a Mac Mini upgrade. Simply bizarre.

What does the Mac mini have to do with this iMac Pro gaming article? Why do people feel the need to try and bitch about the Mac mini in an article that has nothing to with it? You'll get your god damn Mac mini when its ready to be released and I'm sure you won't like it anyways.

Regarding the Mini: looks like Intel will announce a multi-chip part with Core + Radeon Vega M + HBM2 in one package tomorrow (Monday) at CES. This part has Mini written all over it. Hopefully it has TB3.